Laurel S. Peterson: What poetry offers in an election season

Published 6:30 pm, Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Laurel Peterson, an author and poet, is Norwalk’s first poet laureate. Her first mystery novel, “Shadow Notes,” has just been released by Barking Rain Press.

Laurel Peterson, an author and poet, is Norwalk’s first poet laureate. Her first mystery novel, “Shadow Notes,” has just been released by Barking Rain Press.

Photo: Ute-Christin Photography

Laurel S. Peterson: What poetry offers in an election season

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

It’s election season, although the elections aren’t for six months. And every day on the news, someone is shouting at someone else, loudly, their faces like puffed up, yeasty dough. My husband can tolerate this, and thank goodness for that; otherwise, I might be avoiding it all together. But even though it’s good for me to know what’s happening, I find myself responding to the rage, occasionally squawking at the television (no rotten tomatoes yet — not good for the carpet and all that), and that’s not how I want to live in my country or my home or my head.

As recently appointed poet laureate for Norwalk, I’m reading a lot of poems and thinking of ways to bring this literature into the lives of my town’s residents. For this commentary, I first thought I’d write about the ways that literature can teach us things — like how to watch out for tyrants and bullies. See: Captain Ahab in “Moby Dick” (or Captain Hook in “Peter Pan”); but then I thought that I didn’t want to preach, because I’m tired of being preached at.

So I found myself looking for poems that counteracted some of the bluster, fear-mongering and hate. After all, I want a president who is able raise up all Americans no matter their color, shape, or texture.

Instead, it seems some politicians believe we not only have to pay for our groceries, but for our sins: of being women, people of color, impoverished. This usually incites tomato-throwing impulses (see above). So I offer Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese” from her “New and Selected Poems: Volume One,” which gives me some perspective on why I am angry at the campaign rhetoric and its moralizing: “You do not have to be good./ You do not have to walk on your knees/ for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting./ You only have to let the soft animal of your body/love what it loves.” (Full text here: http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/geese/geese.html) Yes, forgiving. That’s what I want.

I also need hope that my nation won’t fracture beyond repair, that we can still find ways to talk to each other, even if we disagree. Elizabeth Alexander captures this need in “Praise Song for the Day,” the poem she wrote for President Barack Obama’s inauguration: (Full text at The Poetry Foundation: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/ poems/detail/52141): “I know there’s something better down the road./ We need to find a place where we are safe./ We walk into that which we cannot yet see.” Safe, yes. How lovely if all our citizens felt safe — to walk down the street at night, to be their colorful selves.

I do feel like lecturing the candidates, however, so perhaps something from April Bernard’s “Psalms:”“Oh do not trouble to be a god on earth, when all falls like legions of tin;/ Quizas, quizas, (maybe, maybe) you are more than what you dream.” Or less.